BS '60
The City College of New York provided me truly the best education anybody could get. One of the things we did in civil engineering was planning communities. Our professor was the head of the planning board of that city that was putting it together. He was giving us real-life problems to build that city. We had a professor who taught us how to do actual drawings, assembly drawings, and detailed drawings of tools. We had to know all the screws, sizes, and dimensions, and we had to draw those and put professional type drawings. He was really a stickler about it to make sure we had the right pencils and the right tools. Professor Kolodny was my professor in chemical engineering, and he was really a true person to respect as a role model. My chemistry teacher taught me critical thinking. He was trying to help me think if I wanted to go for my PhD and was nurturing me all along. Dr. Zemansky was a fantastic physicist and a well-known man. He and the MIT professor produced some of the best physics books. My mathematics teacher, Dr. Sohmer, was another incredible human being. I had trouble with calculus, and he tried to help me anytime I went up to him with a question. At one point he said, 'Elias, I have some connections over to Newman Club. I can arrange for you to go and get some tutoring and help if you are willing to do that in your free periods.' Those were the kinds of people that we had for teachers. To me the people who were there became very well-known people in the city, and I was very proud to be part of that. I went into the space industry. I worked at Thiokol's Reaction Motors Division in New Jersey. I eventually worked for IBM for 29 and a half years. I worked side-by-side with the inventor of the integrated circuit, Bob Noyce. It's my passion to help students in sciences and math, and I have done that for at least 20 years, even though I was working for my own company. CCNY was a fantastic school. You cannot beat it.